|
Grex > Coop8 > #67: Helping people start their own public systems | |
|
| Author |
Message |
scott
|
|
Helping people start their own public systems
| 
May 17 11:20 UTC 1996 |
We've got a pretty big number of users from India these days. That in itself
isn't a problem, but they do put a load on Grex's resources, and because of
the difficulty in getting membership dues from international users, basically
none are paying members. Now while Grex is an open access system, I think
we need a strategy for reducing international user's dependance on Grex.
In other words, we need to help the Indian users set up their own Grex-like
systems! I don't want to be kicking users off, so instead I'd like to see
Grex start some kind of "set up your own system" program, with easy access
to various tools like party, chat, conferencing, etc. Most of the software
we use is public domain anyway.
|
| 63 responses total. |
adbarr
|
|
response 1 of 63:
|
May 17 11:54 UTC 1996 |
Are the users from India in any way concentrated in a particular geographical
area? India is huge! This is a great idea and should be pursued. It is one,
I think, that will require long-term effort. The Universities / Libraries
in India might be the place to look for help. Certainly the ability is there
but access to equipment might differ. If a concentration of users could be
identified perhaps a seed system could be sponsored? This is a nice lesson
about helping international partners for domestic benefit.
|
gregc
|
|
response 2 of 63:
|
May 17 12:20 UTC 1996 |
I did a little looking around this morning. I identified one network that
seems to generate alot of incoming people from India. It's 164.164.0.0.
This is it's "whois" listing:
Software Technology Park- Bangalore (NET-SOFTNET)
Block III, KSSIDC Complex
Keonics Electronics City
Bangalore 562 158
India
I also gathered statistics for May 16th:
Total number of logins: 2768
Total number of uniq logins: 1207
Total number of logins from 164.164: 345
Total number of uniq logins from 164.164: 126
Percentage of total logins from 164.164: 12.5%
Percentage of total uniq logins from 164.164: 10.4%
Those numbers are way up. The last time I checked, we were doing about
2000 total logins in 1 day and we had not yet broke 1000 uniq logins in
one day, but it's been a while since I checked.
This is only statistics for 1 large site in India, we are getting alot of
traffic from many other smaller networks. This one just really stood out
when I went through the logs. I would say that 20% of our traffic is
from Indian users, based on what I saw in the logs.
|
brighn
|
|
response 3 of 63:
|
May 17 13:57 UTC 1996 |
I've talked to several of the Indians. They have all found about us
through Bangalore, if they themselves are not from 164.164. That's
not necessarily true of every single Indian on the system, of course.
80% of them are looking for netsex or relationships with American women.
At least, they were... one was so persistent about it that Selena asked
me to talk to him and ask him to leave her alone (and many of us *know*
how bad a situation is if Selena asks me for help *g*).
But there's the problem... this is an open system, and not all the Indians
are here for sex (and if they want sex, I know better places to get it
on the Net anyhow =} ... maybe we should just have a list of other sites
available *g*), and even if they are, Grex obviously doesn't have anything
in the bylaws against that.
Helping them set up their own system would be an excellent idea.
How to do it, though?
|
carson
|
|
response 4 of 63:
|
May 17 14:20 UTC 1996 |
if "problem" (phrased as solution) relates to nether.net's newuser
being out of service and/or limit on M-Net ttys?
(I'm practicing my incoherency.)
|
brighn
|
|
response 5 of 63:
|
May 17 16:24 UTC 1996 |
M-net's persistent ails seems to have coaxed people into residency
here, but I doubt that relates much to the Indians. Except those
from Cleveland, mayhap. =}
|
kerouac
|
|
response 6 of 63:
|
May 17 20:30 UTC 1996 |
I dont regard this as a problem, I think it is part of the great good
a place like grex can do. Transatlantic calls are prohibitively costly.
At least some indians use grex for really good purposes. One I talked to
has a brother and sister studying here in the U.S., and grex enables him to
email and talk to them and mantain a relationship with them that would be
extremely difficult if not impossible otherwise. I would guess far more
use email than anything else, so I really dont think you can judge the
nature and motivations of the Indians by those who actually get on party.
And some would ikely become members if something could be worke dout.
$60 is a lot more in Indian money so the rate of exchange needs to be
taken into consideration. Perhaps the board needs to consider a special
"international membership" for foriegners only, like $20 a year which
would allow them irc but not outbound 'net services or something.
Actually, I *know* what caused this Indian upsurge! When Valerie was in
India, she must have gone out in public in her grex t-shirt! Probably a
number of lonely Indian guys saw Valerie walking down the street and
thought if she's promoting grex.cyberspace.org, there must be lots of
other beautiful american women here as well.. Its all her fault! :)
|
scott
|
|
response 7 of 63:
|
May 17 21:29 UTC 1996 |
Heck, if international users are talking to family in America, see if the
family might contribute.
|
chelsea
|
|
response 8 of 63:
|
May 18 02:25 UTC 1996 |
I'd rather we spent our efforts convincing all of our users at
large that Grex needs financial support rather than focusing on
one ethnic group as being a problem.
|
adbarr
|
|
response 9 of 63:
|
May 18 03:42 UTC 1996 |
I agree, Mary. Let's go after all ethnic groups and get support!
|
ajax
|
|
response 10 of 63:
|
May 18 05:39 UTC 1996 |
One benefit of Indian users being in India is they use Grex primarily in
the wee hours of the morning by our time (mid-day in India). This is when
Grex's resources used to be the least utilized, and I think their arrival
is a fairly natural load-balancing response to that.
If any Indians have an interest in starting a system in India, we could
certainly try to help. You could ask in the motd if anyone is interested.
Though I'm not convinced a local system would dissipate demand on Grex;
Grex offers a lot for free.
We could also try to boost foreign donations, with added info in the
!support text, and specifically-targetted motd announcements.
|
scg
|
|
response 11 of 63:
|
May 18 11:07 UTC 1996 |
I'd much rather try to work out a good way for foreigners to contribute rather
than trying to get them to leave. We do get some number of people asking us
how to contribute, and I'd really like to see the answer be something other
than, "we don't know." As Arnold said, maybe in another item, there has to
be a way to do it.
One of the things I've really liked seeing as Grex has gotten bigger is the
large number of people we've gotten from different parts of the world. It
makes Grex a much more interesting place, IMHO. I don't think we should be
encouraging the foreign users to just go home.
|
scott
|
|
response 12 of 63:
|
May 18 12:32 UTC 1996 |
For the record, I'm against trying to make people leave, and I certainly don't
want to target specific groups. I'd like to see more Grexes out there, and
finding a group that would be a natural for their own system is the first
place to look for franchises. I'm not sure about Indian talk patterns;
usually when I look I see Indian-like names talking to other Indian-like
names. That and I once saw a bit of mail asking about party source, which
is what spurred me to create this item.
|
chelsea
|
|
response 13 of 63:
|
May 18 13:37 UTC 1996 |
What percentage of our non-member logins come from the good old
U.S.A.? Certainly more than the 20% I've read attributed to
the Indians? Probably more like 75%? So if the object is to
increase donations by targeting a non-donating group why are
we looking to Indians and not Americans?
|
gregc
|
|
response 14 of 63:
|
May 18 14:16 UTC 1996 |
Ummm, because 100% of our membership comes from USA? I'm confused by
your statement that the 75% of our logins coming from this country
represents a "non-donating" group.
|
scott
|
|
response 15 of 63:
|
May 18 15:07 UTC 1996 |
The point being that Americans can easily become members. International
users, because of the exchange problem, would be better candidates for their
own local system they could more easily support.
|
nephi
|
|
response 16 of 63:
|
May 18 15:24 UTC 1996 |
(I have learned a lot from the Indians here. They are a valuable resource.)
|
srw
|
|
response 17 of 63:
|
May 18 19:26 UTC 1996 |
I also don't like the idea of chasing them off, but I don't think that's what
this idea is really about. There are enough Indians for 500 Grex's over there.
If anyone's at fault, it's not Valerie, it's me. Valerie went to Mumbai. We
have a few users from there, but nothing spectacular.
Greg has identified soft.net in Bangalore. this is the Silicon Valley of
India. I worked with people from one company there, and word has spread about
Grex from those people, I am sure. A huge percentage of the high-tech
productivity in India is done in Bangalore.
The population of India is quadruple the population of the US.
I think they can afford donations -- some of them, anyway -- but have a lot
of trouble buying dollars. It's pretty easy to get dollars in most countries,
but India seems to be an exception.
|
chelsea
|
|
response 18 of 63:
|
May 18 20:50 UTC 1996 |
I'm trying to understand the motivation behind this item. If we are
trying to get more users to be members then we simply look at who isn't
buying into financially supporting Grex. So we have (for example) 100
non-member users. 20 or those are from India. 5 are from other countries.
75 are from the USA. We know those from out of country have a harder time
sending money our way. We should work on making it easier. But to target
one ethnic group (those from India) as problem non-contributors when there
is actually a much large group not being targeted (American
non-contributors) (those who don't have to deal with foreign currency
exchange) smacks of fish to me. Are we also suggesting American
non-contributors find alternate conferencing sites? There sure are a lot
more American freeloaders here than Indian freeloaders.
And to suggest that non-contributing Indians, because they are Indians,
somehow stress our resources more than non-contributing Iowans is rather
silly. It costs Grex the same whether a telnetter is sitting in Chicago or
Bombay.
|
scott
|
|
response 19 of 63:
|
May 18 22:49 UTC 1996 |
I'm using the term "international users" to avoid pointing at users from India
as some kind of "offender". Everybody wants some service like Grex. If there
are some people in other countries that have the skills to start a Grexlike
system, then an Indian (or whatever) Grex would be great. As I said in #15,
it isn't the users, it's trying to find a way for them to have access to a
system they can support more easily. We've been clueless on any good way for
some international people to send money to Grex, so why not bring a Grex type
system to their area? More community based systems is what I'm after anyway.
|
janc
|
|
response 20 of 63:
|
May 18 23:01 UTC 1996 |
I'm not sure that other people would find it very easy or attractive to run
a "Grex". Our economic model is not a rousing success. We've proved that
with a lot of hard work by a lot of very able people you can keep a system
like this up and running on a shoe-string budget. But there aren't many
groups of people who could round up enough talented technical people who are
willing to work for free to pull it off. Raising the initial capital would
be difficult unless you already had a seed group of loyal users before your
system even came up.
|
kerouac
|
|
response 21 of 63:
|
May 19 19:43 UTC 1996 |
Again I think this needs to be linked to agora, because we have Indian users
who post there and its doubtful any of them even read coop. Its only fair
to get their reactions.
|
scott
|
|
response 22 of 63:
|
May 19 20:59 UTC 1996 |
Linking would be fine. This is a general purpose discussion, not really a
policy discussion anyway.
|
tsty
|
|
response 23 of 63:
|
May 22 09:44 UTC 1996 |
hmmm, weren't we all bombarded by mckindrie (sp) at one point?
|
scott
|
|
response 24 of 63:
|
May 22 11:10 UTC 1996 |
Every year brings a new crop of McKendrites.
|